


back in the good old way

by cygnes



Series: short fic belatedly posted from tumblr [1]
Category: LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works, Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22947547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnes/pseuds/cygnes
Summary: Holden and Bill interview a murderer with some interesting stories about his family history.
Relationships: Holden Ford & Bill Tench
Series: short fic belatedly posted from tumblr [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648723
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	back in the good old way

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](https://manzanas-amargas.tumblr.com/post/166867167870/in-another-era-elias-mason-would-have-been-a-real) on tumblr. While it ends on a note that hints ominously at future events, this fic is meant to stand alone.

In another era, Elias Mason would have been a real prize for some phrenologist. He’s strangely made: face too flat or perhaps too long, eyes too widely-set or perhaps not set deep enough into the sockets. He’s not deformed; there’s just something subtly odd about his features. They’re not doing a video interview, though. (Not _yet_. Holden still has hope that suggestion might be picked up at a future date.)

“Something bad in the blood,” Mason says. He’s a small man, short and slight-framed, but his voice is deep and resonant. Almost gravelly. He hasn’t been rude, but he hasn’t had much to say up until they asked one of the big questions. _Why?_ “Generations back. You ever look at a fish and want to fuck it?”

“Have you?” Tench returns evenly. Mason snorts, derisive.

“Course not. But somebody did, is what I’m saying. And not just in my family. Half the damn town’s poisoned the same way.”

“Is that why you killed three people?” Holden says. “Trying to get out the poison?”

“Might be part of it,” Mason says. “Might also just be those old instincts. Closer to the surface for me and the other bottom-feeders. Sightless fish, way down where the light can’t reach. Eating each other.”

“Did you eat any of your victims?” Tench says with a glance at Holden. That’s not in Mason’s file, but if there were other victims off the record…

“Come on, man,” Mason says, lip curling. Disgusted. “Not literally.”

“Some of the people we interview do eat other people,” Holden says. He doesn’t look over at Tench. “In the interest of full disclosure.”

“So walk me through the fish thing,” Tench says. “Assuming that’s a figure of speech, too.”

“Not as such,” Mason says.

“You think your grandma was a trout?” Tench says. Riling him up a little, and meaning to do it, but within the bounds of accepted behavior. Holden gets the feeling this is a demonstration for his benefit.

“Here’s another possibility,” Mason says. He leans forward on his elbows. In shadow, his face looks almost normal. “Say you lose your wife. Dead, probably, but all you know is she went to the shore and didn’t come back. Then you have a dream that tells you how to find her again. Down in a cave that you can’t get to at high tide. So you wait for the tide to go out, go in the cave at night, and there she is, so you bring her back out. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, only you get her all the way back to the surface and it’s not your wife. She looks a lot like your wife. But she’s something else. Her skin’s cold, she eats her meat raw, she doesn’t go to church on Sunday. At night you wake up and she’s whispering to you in a language you’ve never heard, but you almost understand it. Before you know it, you’re eating your meat raw, too, and not going to church on Sundays, either. You start to think she’s better than the wife you lost. See?”

“Is that what happened to you?” Holden says. Mason doesn’t have a wife. Never did. Mason hunches further forward.

“Old family story. Back in the eighteen eighties, so it’s said. I was raised with a lot of stories like that. Used to happen in some branch of the family almost every generation. Explained why some of us were strange. Why we didn’t keep with folk who went to regular church.” His phrasing is getting choppier. There’s something buried here under all the strangeness.

“Regular church,” Holden repeats. “Did you go to some other kind of church?”

“Hmmm,” Mason says. He sits back abruptly. “There’s better people to ask about that. Back home. My sister doesn’t keep the faith, but some of my cousins do, last I heard.”

\---

“Barely graduated high school, works as a mechanic, references Greek mythology,” Tench says. “I don’t get this guy’s frame of reference.”

“Maybe he’s an autodidact,” Holden says. “He could be smarter than he likes to let on. It would square with the organization of his killings.” Violent, but contained. He used an axe but planned the murders on his home turf, laid things out to make clean-up easier.

“And he compares himself to an animal, but not any of the obvious predators,” Tench says. For all his complaining, they’re still sharing hotel rooms. It’s mostly for this: when they can’t shut their minds off enough to go to sleep. In separate rooms, there would be no way to tell that they’re both awake. It might give them pause and keep these conversations from happening. Here, there’s nothing to keep them from talking things over. Or around in circles, as the case may be.

“Not a wolf or a hawk,” Holden muses, agreeing. “A fish.”

“A bottom-feeder,” Tench says. “What does that mean?”

“It has to circle back to the fish-fucking thing somehow,” Holden says. “I feel like that’s part of the religion angle.” A thought strikes him suddenly. “Do you think this is something Satanic?” Tench rolls his eyes.

“In New England? Come on. It’s Puritans all the way down.”

“I still say there’s something there. We’re even in-state.” Massachusetts isn’t that big, especially compared to the Midwest. Everything’s close together. “Do you think we could get permission for another day, to drive over and ask around before we interview Mason again?”

“As if you care about permission,” Tench says. He’s taking off his glasses. Just about done for the night. He has to agree now, or he won’t agree at all.

“ _You_ do,” Holden says. “Come on, Bill. It’s not like a day trip to Innsmouth is going to cost much.”


End file.
